“Oh, was Grace there?” Teresa was eager to know.

“Grace was, darlin’.”

“And we’re to have the fancy-work!  You’ll help us, won’t you, mother?  Goody—­I’m in that!” exulted Teresa.

“I’m in that, too!” echoed Alanna, quickly.

“A lot you are, you baby!” said Leo, unkindly.

“You’re not a Child of Mary, Alanna,” Teresa said promptly and uneasily.

“Well—­well—­I can help!” protested Alanna, putting up her lip.  Can’t I, mother?  “Can’t I, mother?”

“You can help me, dovey,” said her mother, absently.  “I’m not goin’ to work as I did for Saint Patrick’s Bazaar, Dad, and I said so!  Mrs. O’Connell and Mrs. King said they’d do all the work, if I’d just be the nominal head.  Mary Murray will do us some pillers—­ leather—­with Gibsons and Indians on them.  And I’ll have Lizzie Bayne up here for a month, makin’ me aprons and little Jappy wrappers, and so on.”

She paused over the cutlets and the chicken pie, which she had been helping with an amazing attention to personal preference.  The young Costellos chafed at the delay, but their mother’s fine eyes saw them not.

“Kelley & Moffat ought to let me have materials at half price,” she reflected aloud.  “My bill’s two or three hundred a month!”

“You always say that you’re not going to do a thing, and then get in and make more than any other booth!” said Dan, proudly.

“Oh, not this year, I won’t,” his mother assured him.  But in her heart she knew she would.

“Aren’t you glad it’s fancy-work?” said Teresa.  “It doesn’t get all sloppy and mussy like ice-cream, does it, mother?”

“Gee, don’t you love fairs!” burst out Leo, rapturously.

“Sliding up and down the floor before the dance begins, Dan, to work in the wax?” suggested Jimmy, in pleasant anticipation.  “We go every day and every night, don’t we, mother?”

“Ask your father,” said Mrs. Costello, discreetly.

But the Mayor’s attention just then was taken by Alanna, who had left her chair to go and whisper in his ear.

“Why, here’s Alanna’s heart broken!” said he, cheerfully, encircling her little figure with a big arm.

Alanna shrank back suddenly against him, and put her wet cheek on his shoulder.

“Now, whatever is it, darlin’?” wondered her mother, sympathetically, but without concern.  “You’ve not got a pain, have you, dear?”

“She wants to help the Children of Mary!” said her father, tenderly.  “She wants to do as much as Tessie does!”

“Oh, but, Dad, she can’t!” fretted Teresa.  “She’s not a Child of Mary!  She oughtn’t to want to tag that way.  Now all the other girls’ sisters will tag!”

“They haven’t got sisters!” said Alanna, red-cheeked of a sudden.

“Why, Mary Alanna Costello, they have too!  Jean has, and Stella has, and Grace has her little cousins!” protested Teresa, triumphantly.